Just last month Logitech announced their Harmony Living Home lineup. The new remotes are taking a big step towards total home control. Logitech have long been the king of controlling AV equipment through IR, RF or Bluetooth.

The "dumb" Harmony

With the previous Harmony Smart hub and and Harmony Ultimate lineup they connected the remote to the home WiFi network and let a central HUB handle all the work as opposed to the remote itself enabling control from multiple devices like Smartphones. The HUB is the brains behind the whole operation, where before it was the remote itself which did all the work. The HUB made it possible for numerous devices to take control of the ongoing activity or to start a new one. This meant that you could start an activity from the remote and turn it back off from your smart phone.

The Ultimate and Smart hub also allowed control Phillips Hue lights, and later SONOS and the Nest Thermostat. Other than that though it was not very smart. For a long time i was frustrated.

Why did Logitech have a remote connected to the "internet" only being able to control selected partner products?

Why did they not release an API for it letting community developers create even smarter integration for it?

I was eager on having the possibility to control the remote through my Fibaro smart home controller or on my phone without being stuck to the Logitech App it self. I uploaded a Youtube video showing my work around to the problem. I programmed Tasker for android to simulate all the taps necessary to start an activity or to shut down the system. So with the use of two android phones ,Tasker,AutoremoteandAutovoicei was able to remotely control the HUB but it was painfully slow.

Harmony Living Home

The HUB itself look very similar to the previous one but the remotes now come in white as well as the previous Black/gray colors. The UI has got a major overhaul and is a lot faster than what it previously was. The new UI is flatter but still more vivid in design. All the buttons and text are bigger, the whole user interface is just better and more intuitive.

The remotes have a set of new buttons reserved for smart home control. Designed for dimming, and turning on and off lights and sockets.

The Home Ultimate version looks pretty much identical to the previous Smart Ultimate remote except it also comes in white. The Ultimate version of the remote is more advanced and has a touch screen integrated on it allowing for extended control and customization. But i must admit having used both that i actually prefer the "dumber" one without the screen. That might sound strange because you are very limited when using the one without the screen, but i would summarize it like this:

Long battery life (up to 12 months)

All physical buttons

Play and pause buttons are better placed

Faster operation

And the advanced operation needed on the ultimate can always be performed on a smart phone. If this is going to be the case for the Home lineup i am not sure, being able to combine the two is probably an even better solution.

Logitech have partnered with several new companies making sure the remote wil work with most popular smort home products. They have announced support for Smartthings, IFTT, Kwikset, Lutron, Phillips Hue, Honeywell and Nest with more coming. The new remotes are getting an expansion unit pretty soon. The expansion unit will get Z-wave and Zigbee radio functionality. Now whether or not we need a new smart home controller is maybe not the case but if it can act as a slave controller for other major controllers in addition to beeing a master controller for people without a controller then i absolutely agree. The Harmony smart home extender plugs into the micro USB at the back of the HUB.

Harmony Developer Program

And finally together with the launch of the Living Home linup they have released an API for the remote and announcing support for the popular IFTTT.com service which i have written about previously here. Now this is welcoming news and a game changer for the remote. I think we will see some pretty cool features and new use for the remotes in near future. Unfortunately the new functionality will not work for the Smart Hub and Harmony Ultimate now but Logitech have promised an update for the previous Remote lineups.

Tasker Harmony Plugin

For now though Android users out there can use the Harmony Tasker Plug-in which will allow you to to what the Harmony API can do today with a bit of Android Tasker programming.

Download Harmony tasker plug in from the Play store, and Tasker if you do not have that already.

1. Press the + Button on the top right corner to add a HUB

2. Name your hub, fill in your account information and the IP of your HUB. Validate the connection and save HUB.

3.The HUB wil be displayed in the overview

4.Open Tasker and create a new task with a Plugin action. Choose Harmony Ultimate plug in.

5.Press the edit pencil button on the top right corner

6.Select your desired activity action

Start activity by Google Now voice

1. Navigate to the event tab in Tasker and create a new event

2.Choose Plugin

3. Choose Autovoice "OK Google" Now. Remember Autovoice is an additional Tasker plugin and will have to be downloaded.

4.Press the edit button on the top right corner

5. Remember to tick off for Trigger word regex if you want to use multiple trigger words. and then select the trigger word.

i have start|watch plex. That means i can say Start plex or watch plex and both commands will work.

After you have done this you can then link that profile to any Tasker task. So for this example i can say "Ok Google" "start plex" and the harmony Tasker plugin will communicate with the Hub and start the specified task. It is also possible to remote control an operation like this by using auto remote for tasker or like what i have done to be able to control my Harmony from Fibaro HC by using pushover. I have set up pushover on my Fibaro HC2 and programmed my tasker to launch an Harmony activity whenever a Pushover message with a specieifed text is recieved. I can then activate the good night scene for my house and the TV will turn off.

possibileties here are endless, NFC, Android Wear, GPS Voice Etc. I am looking forward to the future of Harmony and the future of making all my gadgets talk together.

Hi
So now its posibel to control your hub with the fibaro
But how do you conect your hub with the fibaro ?
The hub dont have z wave and fibaro wurks with z wave if im not wrong
I hope you can help me greets sonny

Reply

Stian Øien

20/1/2015 01:25:50 am

use the pushover service and android for the time beeing. I have programmed my HC2 to send a Harmony message. Pushover har an android Tasker plugin. When my phone recieves the defined pushover message it will start or stop the Harmony task specified in the Harmony tasker plugin. If you are not familiar with Tasker for Android you will have to get to know it. If you do not own an Android device you will have to sell your iPhone and get one :)

Reply

Stian Øien

20/1/2015 01:33:55 am

The fibaro forums har a couple of posts on how to set up pushover on HC2. All this works over httpand not z wave as you indicated.

Reply

Joakim

16/12/2016 04:16:20 pm

Hi, is it possible the other way around? To make a Tasker profile that detects if a Harmony Hub activity is running? So if my watch tv activity is running i am able to make Tasker perform à task? Is this possible?